Project Isaac Winners: Digital

When the lights went out—and the game stopped—during the 2013 Super Bowl, 108 million viewers were left waiting to be entertained. Oreo and agency 360i filled the vacuum with a timely tweet encouraging followers to “dunk in the dark.” The stroke of genius—on the heels of the brand serving up rapid-fire, topical content in its “Daily Twist” campaign—ended up delivering a textbook example of real-time marketing, one that has yet to be replicated by another marketer in such a big way (though certainly not for lack of trying).

Mobile

No More of That Annoying Little 'X'

Touchscreen Innovations, by SoMo Audience Corp.

Nobody wants to be sent to a website on his mobile device by accidentally clicking on a touchscreen ad, nor do brands want to pay for that unintentional visit. It's a big problem—some 40 percent of clicks on ads via touchscreen are accidental or fraudulent. Technology from Swipe Advertising makes it possible to simply swipe past an ad as opposed to playing hit-or-miss with that tiny, annoying little "x."

Digital Publishing

A Crystal Ball For What's Going Viral

Ars Technica's The Accelerator

Every publisher and brand wants people to see its ads, but which articles will attract eyes seems impossible to predict. To capitalize on unexpected surges in traffic around breaking stories, Condé Nast's Ars Technica built The Accelerator, a logarithm-driven dashboard that predicts when stories are about to go viral, giving marketers a chance to jump on the bandwagon before traffic peaks. The net result: Better targeting for better impressions.

Tablet Media

Conan Goes Wall-to-Wall

TBS' Team Coco App

You're sitting down to watch late-night funnyman Conan O’Brien—but it could be even more fun. Just reach for your tablet, point the Team Coco app at your TV screen and hit the sync button. Up comes more Conan on a second screen, featuring content like behind-the-scenes photos of guests, trivia and tweetable clips and quotes, all automatically matched to what’s happening on the first screen. Brought to us by Turner Broadcasting and sponsor AT&T, because maybe, just maybe there’s never such a thing as too much Conan.

App Development

A Hi-Tech Makeover for Sticky Notes

Post-it PopNotes

To help Post-it reach younger consumers, agency Modern Climate reimagined the product for a smartphone-fueled world, creating a portable tool enabling users to leave digital notes for themselves and others anywhere in the world—complete with features like location-based reminders and functionality for ridiculous doodles. While the digital notes may still pile up, the good news for wary Luddites is that at least they won’t slip off your computer screen and into the wastebasket, lost forever.

Web Video

A New perspective on One of History's Scariest Moments

Clouds Over Cuba

For 13 days in October 1962, the world came terrifyingly close to nuclear war. To mark the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, the JFK Presidential Library and The Martin Agency created an online documentary that lets viewers navigate video interviews with expert historians as well as primary source documents from the era, including recordings of President John F. Kennedy's meetings with national security advisors during the international standoff. To drive the sobering point of the episode home, Clouds Over Cuba also imagines an alternate ending with four fictional characters looking back at a world where nuclear war did happen—as if the mere possibility weren’t frightening enough.